First intake of Boys 12th Feb
1920
After the tasks of war, the toils of peace. The sea power of our Navy paves the way for the sea power of our Merchant Fleet.
Hitherto England's merchantmen have been manned by chance-medley. A boy thinks he would like the sea. He is shipped on a tramp and picks up his exacting trade or calling anyhow - here a little and there a little. Not so are boys trained for the Navy. Our Watts School takes them through a steady routine, and not otherwise could our youngsters pass the tests set them by the Naval authorities. The age of anyhow and rule-of-thumb for the Merchant Fleet is coming to an end as it has already come to an end for our mighty Navy. Over three thousand Barnardo Boys are keeping the trade flag unfurled in our Mercantile Marine, And they have had to learn their profession in the good old easy, careless, anyhow fashion. They have done well. But they were handicapped when they went to sea. They did not know the ABC of their craft, and it was only through much tribulation that they learned it. Furthermore, not merely are boys wanted for this purpose, but Admiral Lord Jellicoe declares that the British Mercantile Marine is ‘the most valuable, indeed, the only reserve that the Royal Navy has. The Navy could not have gone on without its aid’.
Why should not lads be trained for the life of the Merchantman, just as they are trained for the life of the Navy? That is what Britain is asking. Yet there are today less than two thousand boys under training for the Mercantile Marine! Eight thousand would be all too few! British trade has to meet after the war a keener competition on the sea than ever in its history. Yet to us, an island power, sea trade is our industrial lifeblood. Our homes propose to answer that urgent question. The idea is not of yesterday; but we have only just begun to see the lines of our answer.
Out of the hundreds of lads that pass through our hands (we always have about 3,600 boys under our charge) we propose to select some of the best and healthiest and put under training for the Merchant Service. In our June issue we launched this scheme. We told how we wanted an estate near the coast and a tender. We can supply the boys, and we hope to make as great a success of this enterprise as we admittedly have done of the Watts Naval School. The latter feeds the Navy; the former will feed the Merchant Fleet that feeds the Navy! And even if there is not to be a need for an after-the-war Navy, we shall never lose the need for a Merchant Fleet.
Already we have chronicled one munificent gift for Ł5,000 in aid. More such gifts are wanted, and the desirability of the scheme grows with every week. Our scheme for helping our boys and for helping the Mercantile Marine of our country came before Sir Merton Russell-Cotes, of Bournemouth. This generous friend has offered us an estate of 34 acres, situated 3˝ miles west of Bournemouth, and one-mile north-east of Poole. He proposes to place this estate at our disposal for development as a nautical school for the Merchant Service. It is a large scheme, and we shall need all the help we can get to carry it through. But it has huge possibilities.
Its main scope will imply 'all appliances and means to boot' for the training of 300 boys. We propose the erection of five houses, each to shelter 60 boys. The plan would involve the erection also of workshops, dining hall and kitchen, isolation block, dormitories, outdoor swimming bath, staff and superintendent's house, and other buildings. The estate is charmingly and health fully situated, with delightful views over Poole Harbour and the sea. It lends itself to easy development. Within 1˝ miles there is ample convenience for the anchorage of a sea-going tender. We can hardly hope to obtain a gift of this training boat while shipping is in its present condition, but perhaps some friend of the Homes may be moved to note this great gap in our project and earmark that tender, with the intention in due season of presenting it as a name gift to the rising youth of the nation. There is a good water supply; the main drainage is within easy distance, and electricity and gas are both readily available. Churches and chapels and schools are within easy reach. The open country lies behind it. It has a gravel soil.
Nor is the gift of this estate all that Sir Merton proposes. He is ready to devote a generous cheque for the erection of the central building. It will be called the Lady Russell-Cotes House, and will be in perpetual remembrance of her ladyship, who is equally interested in the scheme.
Sir Merton's munificence lays the foundation of a scheme of national importance. It will help to maintain Great Britain's sea supremacy in the strenuous years to come. And it will offer to the rising lads of the coming years careers such as would have been impossible of attainment only a year ago. We are convinced that we can supply the personnel, and thus fulfil Admiral Lord Jellicoe's ideal of an effective Mercantile Marine acting as a nursery, if need be, for the Navy.
We lay the enterprise at this early stage before our readers. We ask them if those lads are not worthy for whom we should do this - if it is not a great, a hopeful and an urgent national task? And, finally, we beg their co-operation.
Our Honorary Director will be very glad to receive and answer letters of enquiry upon the new enterprise. We hope that the foundation stone of the first house may be ready for laying in the spring of next year.
From Night and Day December 1918The first House built at Parkstone was named Lady Russell-Cotes House. Does anybody know when the other houses were built and how they got the names, Howard House, Broughton House.
To view some information collated by Richard Eastwood click here to view
Never, in the history of the Homes, has there been a day more instinct with hope and the buoyant spirit of youth than the day on which HRH Prince Albert laid the foundation stone of our new Russell-Cotes Nautical School. It was a spring day, and the blossoms and tender green of springing life on the hillsides and hedgerows seemed trying to vie with the bunting with which joyous hands had decked the town. And amongst the spring joy and the laughter of little children came the young Prince to dedicate the gift of Sir Merton Russell-Cotes of Bournemouth.
Many of the well-known people of the county were there on the crimson coloured platform on 8th May. There was also the Right Rev the Lord Bishop of Salisbury and the Rev the Hon R. E. Adderley; the Earl of Shaftesbury, whose name has for so many years been a household word to poor children; the Duke of Somerset (our president); Brigadier-General Page Croft, MP; Howard Williams, Esq; William McCall, Esq; Sir John Kirk; Captain Stebbing; Major Greig; and W. W. Hind Smith, Esq. Close to the young Prince were the Girl Guides - his guard of honour - and all around were the children, big and little, rich and poor, all smiling.
After the hush of prayer, the Prince made his first public speech in laying the stone. What finer debut could the scion of any Royal House have to look back upon than this appearance of his at Parkstone to inaugurate our Nautical School?
His Royal Highness said: 'I am very glad to have the privilege of being here this afternoon to take part in the beginning of a scheme which I know will be of very great benefit to the Mercantile Marine and the country in general. We have learnt through bitter experience during the war how much we owe to the Mercantile Marine. We know by the result of the war how the fate of the country depended on them, how splendidly they came to our help - men of the merchant ships, minesweepers, drifters, and other fleet auxiliaries and how we won through at the cost of 15,000 of their lives. As we depended on the Merchant Service in war, so in peace we depend on them for the reconstruction of our world trade, and to this end we must have a first-class merchant fleet with well-trained, well-equipped British crews. I am sure that the RussellCotes Nautical School will be of the greatest help in attaining this end. With the example of the Watts Naval School in Norfolk, in connection with Dr Barnardo's Homes, before it, we can go forward in confidence with our project. The Watts School turned out hundreds of young sailors for the Navy. Every battleship which took part in the war had a Watts boy among the crew. When volunteers were called for the attack at Zeebrugge five Watts boys were among them. Two others went down on the Hampshire with Lord Kitchener. So that the Watts School already has noble traditions in the 16 years of its life. What the Watts School is to the Navy, so I am sure the Russell-Cotes School will be to the Merchant Service. You will, I know, join me in wishing this new school will turn out a great and fruitful enterprise, which will carry the names of the generous donors and Dr Barnardo's Homes into a long and brilliant future.
And there upon the foundation stone was 'well and truly laid' amid general cheers. The Earl of Shaftesbury, our Chairman for the day, reminded us all of a thing we are never likely to forget the debt we owe to the Navy, England's 'sure shield', which saved us from the fate of Belgium. He went on to express his admiration of the Merchantile Marine and his firm conviction that in the future a thing so vitally a National concern should be run systematically, so that never again could slackness be laid at our British doors. This School, he said, would keep in constant training 300 sailor boys. A small drop in the ocean of the British Empire, but a splendid beginning!
The Duke of Somerset, after expressing the pleasure it gave him to see one of the younger members of the Royal Family enlisted in the cause of child rescue, spoke enthusiastically of the Watts Naval School and its splendid record of devotion and service, and pointed out the extreme significance of the fact that, in their most impressionable years the boys were and would be brought up in the traditions of the Navy and the Merchant Service, trained in the habits of precision and swift obedience, and able to devote their splendid vitality and spirits to something constructive, instead of coming into the career late in life and finding that they had everything to learn.
From Night and Day June 1919
A GREAT SAILOR'S LAST MESSAGE
'I wish you all the happiest of lives and great success in your future. The best of luck to you all!'
This was the farewell message of the late Earl Jellicoe to the boys of our RusseIl-Cotes Nautical School, Bournemouth, when, with Lady JeIlicoe, he visited the school on 29th October.
The great sailor was present in Bournemouth to perform the opening ceremony of the Annual Exhibition of the Disabled Soldiers' and Sailors' Workshops, and it was we believe, characteristic of his interest in constructive social work that he made time, also, to visit the Barnardo school, and give a personal message to the future sailors training there.
He commended the boys for their smartness and efficiency. He told them that he remembered the start of the school, and said that he felt the improvements that had been made since that time, reflected great credit on staff and boys alike.
They were training for the Merchant Navy, that great organisation whose work it was to bring the nation's food from the far places overseas, and to establish sea communications between this country and other parts of the world.
Earl Jellicoe recalled the fine service rendered by men of the Merchant Navy during the great war. He knew, personally, men whose ships had been torpedoed five or six times, but who still came back to serve again.
Writing afterwards to a personal friend, keenly interested in our Bournemouth branch, the Admiral made special mention of his visit.
'My wife and I,' he wrote, 'were very much impressed by our visit to the Nautical School.'
We believe this visit was the last inspection carried out by Earl Jellicoe.
The Captain-Superintendent, the staff and boys combined to send a wreath to the funeral of a friend whose kindness was still very fresh in their memory, and later a letter was received from Lady Jellicoe, expressing her 'heartfelt thanks' for their 'kindness and sympathy'.
From Night and Day 1936